[ECOLOG-L] Unsustainable sustainability Re: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues
Ecolog and Schulze: With The usual applications of sustainable strike me as practically meaningless and little more than greener than some other conventional alternative, Schulze lets the elephant out of the closet. Let there be honesty. His definition is a good one, too, although I will grudgingly grant that we may have to accept some DEGREES of sustainability as a transitional process necessary to reach transformation. Still, let's not let the dissemblers and sleight-of-hand spinmeisters, especially in science and absolutely in ecology, get away with outright bs. Unfortunately, there seems to be far too much of this, and it's time that action was taken before the credibility of ecology as an intellectual discipline goes all the way down the sewer. I hope some of the more prominent names in ecology will exercise their considerable leverage to expose cases that accelerate the vortex regarding not only sustainability but other flim-flammery in ecology and science. Pretty soon, it's gonna be too late. WT PS: Do prominent ecologists ever hear these pleas? - Original Message - From: Peter Schulze pschu...@austincollege.edu To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2012 2:12 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues I define a sustainable process as one that does not degrade the conditions or processes that it depends upon. But, we don't know the effects of our actions well enough to confidently classify current actions vis-a-vis sustainability (except in obviously non-sustainable cases). If that is so, then sustainability can only really be judged in retrospect and an alternative term, such as apparent sustainability, should be used for assessments of current processes that look ok but have not stood the test of time. I think I first heard this point made by Robert Costanza. Apologies to him if I have botched or muddled it. The usual applications of sustainable strike me as practically meaningless and little more than greener than some other conventional alternative. I once heard an architect claim that a brick is sustainable. She apparently hadn't read typical accounts of what happened to the forests around the Indus Valley thousands of years ago. Pete Peter C. Schulze, Ph.D. Professor of Biology Environmental Science Director, Center for Environmental Studies Austin College 900 North Grand Avenue, Suite 61588 | Sherman, TX 75090 USA Phone 903.813.2284 austincollege.edu On 7/17/12 10:36 AM, David L. McNeely mcnee...@cox.net wrote: Michael Riedman mried...@terpmail.umd.edu wrote: Hello sustainable eco-loggers, This is my first eco-log post! I just graduated from University of Maryland with a minor in Sustainability Studies. We were taught the Brundtland Commission definition of Sustainability, which I believe is clear and concise. Sustainability is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Michael Riedman It works for an anthropocentric perspective (I am assuming that needs and generations refer to people). With that caveat, I believe it is very close to the definition I provided. On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 6:05 AM, Neil Paul Cummins neilpaulcumm...@gmail.com wrote: I'll start off: Sustainability = the biosphere of the Earth continuing to exist in a state which can sustain complex life-forms This is how I define sustainability in my book: What Does it Mean to be ŒGreen¹? : *Sustainability, Respect Spirituality* ** *http://www.amazon.com/dp/1907962131/ref=nosim?tag=cranmorpublic-20* Dr Neil Paul Cummins http://neilpaulcummins.blogspot.co.uk/ On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 3:58 AM, Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net wrote: Ecolog: johoma, thanks for this summary. PLos Biology is leading the way, and someday Opens Source journals will be more common, edging out the ripoff journals and truly advancing science and education for all. There is more work to be done, but PLos Biology is helping to put steam behind the trend toward adaptative progress rather than competitive concentration of power that has stultified true progress in the past. Science will prosper in the sunlight as the Information Age emerges from the selfish Dark Ages of exclusivity, excess, and concentration of power in the hands of vulcanized institutionalism. Doomed? Only if we persist in our comfortable delusions. But sustainability still needs definition. The term has suffered a similar fate that ecology has--captured by spinmeisters and twisted into all sorts of buzz-phrases that make all sorts of unsustainable practices salable by Mad Av and its ilk. For starters, Ecolog subscribers could do this right here--define sustainability with clarity. Please proceed. (Can 14,000+ ecologists be
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Unsustainable sustainability Re: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues
A Declaration of Independence for the planet and its lifeforms - starting with the USA: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6916. If wishes were horses... CL ~~ Cara Lin Bridgman cara@msa.hinet.net cara@megaview.com.tw P.O. Box 013 Shinjhuang http://megaview.com.tw/~caralin Longjing District http://www.BugDorm.com Taichung 43499 TaiwanPhone: 886-4-2632-5484 ~~
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues
Your questions are covered by my definition: Sustainability = the biosphere of the Earth continuing to exist in a state which can sustain complex life-forms Q1 Sustaining what? Complex life-forms Q2 For whom? Complex life-forms Q3 For how long? This doesn't seem helpful. Either there is sustainability or there isn't sustainability Q4 Is it important that this resource be sustained?The existence of Complex life-forms seems to be important Q5 Why? Complex life-forms are a 'more interesting' / 'valuable' part of the universe than everything else Neil http://neilpaulcummins.blogspot.co.uk/ On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 2:10 PM, Taal Levi trl...@ucsc.edu wrote: Ah, the definition should be a list if questions. Sustaining what? For whom? For how long? Is it important that this resource be sustained? Why? T On Jul 16, 2012, at 10:58 PM, Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net wrote: Ecolog: johoma, thanks for this summary. PLos Biology is leading the way, and someday Opens Source journals will be more common, edging out the ripoff journals and truly advancing science and education for all. There is more work to be done, but PLos Biology is helping to put steam behind the trend toward adaptative progress rather than competitive concentration of power that has stultified true progress in the past. Science will prosper in the sunlight as the Information Age emerges from the selfish Dark Ages of exclusivity, excess, and concentration of power in the hands of vulcanized institutionalism. Doomed? Only if we persist in our comfortable delusions. But sustainability still needs definition. The term has suffered a similar fate that ecology has--captured by spinmeisters and twisted into all sorts of buzz-phrases that make all sorts of unsustainable practices salable by Mad Av and its ilk. For starters, Ecolog subscribers could do this right here--define sustainability with clarity. Please proceed. (Can 14,000+ ecologists be wrong?) WT - Original Message - From: johoma joh...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, June 25, 2012 2:15 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues An excerpt from the PLoS Biology editor-in-chief's overview: One of the reasons we publish more accessible magazine-like articles in the front section of *PLoS Biology* http://www.plosbiology.org/home.action is to raise awareness about issues that are important both to practicing scientists and to the wider public. As an open access journal, we can reach communities and organisations that don’t have access to the pay-walled literature, and they in turn can redistribute and reuse these articles without permission from us or the authors. The articles we published yesterday in our front section provide a case in point. In Rio de Janeiro last week, world leaders met for the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development http://www.uncsd2012.org/ to ”shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection”. We’re featuring three articles and an accompanying podcasthttp://blogs.plos.org/plospodcasts/from leading ecologists and conservation scientists that raise absolutely fundamental concerns about the physical limits on resource use that should be considered at the conference—but almost certainly won’t be, because sustainability has focused primarily on the social and economic sciences and developed largely independently of the key ecological principles that govern life. Burger et al argue that resources on earth are finite and ultimately we are constrained by the same hard biophyisical laws that regulate every other species and population on the planet. Famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon at a distance of about 29,000 kilometers. (Photo: NASA) The inspiration for this article collection came from Georgina Macehttp://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/g.mace, one of our Editorial Board membershttp://www.plosbiology.org/static/edboard.actionand Professor of Conservation Science and Director of the NERC Centre for Population Biology http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/cpb. It started with an essay http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001345 submitted by Robbie Burger https://sites.google.com/site/josephrobertburger/, Jim Brown, http://biology.unm.edu/jhbrown/index.shtmlCraig Allenhttp://www.fort.usgs.gov/staff/staffprofile.asp?StaffID=109and others from Jim Brown’s lab http://biology.unm.edu/jhbrown/labmembers.shtml, in which they argue that the field of sustainability science does not sufficiently take account of human ecology and in particular the larger view offered by human macroecology, which aims to understand
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues
I'll start off: Sustainability = the biosphere of the Earth continuing to exist in a state which can sustain complex life-forms This is how I define sustainability in my book: What Does it Mean to be ‘Green’? : *Sustainability, Respect Spirituality* ** *http://www.amazon.com/dp/1907962131/ref=nosim?tag=cranmorpublic-20* Dr Neil Paul Cummins http://neilpaulcummins.blogspot.co.uk/ On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 3:58 AM, Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net wrote: Ecolog: johoma, thanks for this summary. PLos Biology is leading the way, and someday Opens Source journals will be more common, edging out the ripoff journals and truly advancing science and education for all. There is more work to be done, but PLos Biology is helping to put steam behind the trend toward adaptative progress rather than competitive concentration of power that has stultified true progress in the past. Science will prosper in the sunlight as the Information Age emerges from the selfish Dark Ages of exclusivity, excess, and concentration of power in the hands of vulcanized institutionalism. Doomed? Only if we persist in our comfortable delusions. But sustainability still needs definition. The term has suffered a similar fate that ecology has--captured by spinmeisters and twisted into all sorts of buzz-phrases that make all sorts of unsustainable practices salable by Mad Av and its ilk. For starters, Ecolog subscribers could do this right here--define sustainability with clarity. Please proceed. (Can 14,000+ ecologists be wrong?) WT - Original Message - From: johoma joh...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, June 25, 2012 2:15 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues An excerpt from the PLoS Biology editor-in-chief's overview: One of the reasons we publish more accessible magazine-like articles in the front section of *PLoS Biology* http://www.plosbiology.org/home.action is to raise awareness about issues that are important both to practicing scientists and to the wider public. As an open access journal, we can reach communities and organisations that don’t have access to the pay-walled literature, and they in turn can redistribute and reuse these articles without permission from us or the authors. The articles we published yesterday in our front section provide a case in point. In Rio de Janeiro last week, world leaders met for the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development http://www.uncsd2012.org/ to ”shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection”. We’re featuring three articles and an accompanying podcasthttp://blogs.plos.org/plospodcasts/from leading ecologists and conservation scientists that raise absolutely fundamental concerns about the physical limits on resource use that should be considered at the conference—but almost certainly won’t be, because sustainability has focused primarily on the social and economic sciences and developed largely independently of the key ecological principles that govern life. Burger et al argue that resources on earth are finite and ultimately we are constrained by the same hard biophyisical laws that regulate every other species and population on the planet. Famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon at a distance of about 29,000 kilometers. (Photo: NASA) The inspiration for this article collection came from Georgina Macehttp://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/g.mace, one of our Editorial Board membershttp://www.plosbiology.org/static/edboard.actionand Professor of Conservation Science and Director of the NERC Centre for Population Biology http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/cpb. It started with an essay http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001345 submitted by Robbie Burger https://sites.google.com/site/josephrobertburger/, Jim Brown, http://biology.unm.edu/jhbrown/index.shtmlCraig Allenhttp://www.fort.usgs.gov/staff/staffprofile.asp?StaffID=109and others from Jim Brown’s lab http://biology.unm.edu/jhbrown/labmembers.shtml, in which they argue that the field of sustainability science does not sufficiently take account of human ecology and in particular the larger view offered by human macroecology, which aims to understand what governs and limits human distribution. The very strong – and seemingly obvious – point they make is that ultimately we are constrained by the same hard biophyisical laws that regulate every other species and population on the planet — and we have already surpassed the Earth’s capacity to sustain even current levels of human population and socioeconomic activity, let alone future trajectories of growth. And while we often applaud ourselves for doing something apparently sustainable at a local level, we ignore the fact that we
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues
Ah, the definition should be a list if questions. Sustaining what? For whom? For how long? Is it important that this resource be sustained? Why? T On Jul 16, 2012, at 10:58 PM, Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net wrote: Ecolog: johoma, thanks for this summary. PLos Biology is leading the way, and someday Opens Source journals will be more common, edging out the ripoff journals and truly advancing science and education for all. There is more work to be done, but PLos Biology is helping to put steam behind the trend toward adaptative progress rather than competitive concentration of power that has stultified true progress in the past. Science will prosper in the sunlight as the Information Age emerges from the selfish Dark Ages of exclusivity, excess, and concentration of power in the hands of vulcanized institutionalism. Doomed? Only if we persist in our comfortable delusions. But sustainability still needs definition. The term has suffered a similar fate that ecology has--captured by spinmeisters and twisted into all sorts of buzz-phrases that make all sorts of unsustainable practices salable by Mad Av and its ilk. For starters, Ecolog subscribers could do this right here--define sustainability with clarity. Please proceed. (Can 14,000+ ecologists be wrong?) WT - Original Message - From: johoma joh...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, June 25, 2012 2:15 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues An excerpt from the PLoS Biology editor-in-chief's overview: One of the reasons we publish more accessible magazine-like articles in the front section of *PLoS Biology* http://www.plosbiology.org/home.action is to raise awareness about issues that are important both to practicing scientists and to the wider public. As an open access journal, we can reach communities and organisations that don’t have access to the pay-walled literature, and they in turn can redistribute and reuse these articles without permission from us or the authors. The articles we published yesterday in our front section provide a case in point. In Rio de Janeiro last week, world leaders met for the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development http://www.uncsd2012.org/ to ”shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection”. We’re featuring three articles and an accompanying podcasthttp://blogs.plos.org/plospodcasts/from leading ecologists and conservation scientists that raise absolutely fundamental concerns about the physical limits on resource use that should be considered at the conference—but almost certainly won’t be, because sustainability has focused primarily on the social and economic sciences and developed largely independently of the key ecological principles that govern life. Burger et al argue that resources on earth are finite and ultimately we are constrained by the same hard biophyisical laws that regulate every other species and population on the planet. Famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon at a distance of about 29,000 kilometers. (Photo: NASA) The inspiration for this article collection came from Georgina Macehttp://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/g.mace, one of our Editorial Board membershttp://www.plosbiology.org/static/edboard.actionand Professor of Conservation Science and Director of the NERC Centre for Population Biology http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/cpb. It started with an essay http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001345submitted by Robbie Burger https://sites.google.com/site/josephrobertburger/, Jim Brown, http://biology.unm.edu/jhbrown/index.shtmlCraig Allenhttp://www.fort.usgs.gov/staff/staffprofile.asp?StaffID=109and others from Jim Brown’s lab http://biology.unm.edu/jhbrown/labmembers.shtml, in which they argue that the field of sustainability science does not sufficiently take account of human ecology and in particular the larger view offered by human macroecology, which aims to understand what governs and limits human distribution. The very strong – and seemingly obvious – point they make is that ultimately we are constrained by the same hard biophyisical laws that regulate every other species and population on the planet — and we have already surpassed the Earth’s capacity to sustain even current levels of human population and socioeconomic activity, let alone future trajectories of growth. And while we often applaud ourselves for doing something apparently sustainable at a local level, we ignore the fact that we displace the consequences of using up resources either temporally or spatially at larger regional or global scales. These authors provide a powerful set of examples that show the wider detrimental impacts of locally
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues
Ok, I'll bite: A sustainable practice is one which can be continued indefinitely without depleting the resources upon which it and other features necessary to the system it supports depend. I submit that as written it captures the essence of the idea. Knock it down if you wish, or modify it. I'll give you a couple of starts in those directions. This definition would not preclude depletion of entities not essential to the practice or to other aspects of the system it supports, and so might not satisfy those like myself who value such immaterial resources as solitude and beauty. Most aspects of natural systems are still poorly understood. That could allow persons who have particular motives dependent on resource exploitation to argue, based on this definition and current knowledge, that their practice is sustainable. However, the consequences may simply be unknown. David McNeely Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net wrote: Ecolog: johoma, thanks for this summary. PLos Biology is leading the way, and someday Opens Source journals will be more common, edging out the ripoff journals and truly advancing science and education for all. There is more work to be done, but PLos Biology is helping to put steam behind the trend toward adaptative progress rather than competitive concentration of power that has stultified true progress in the past. Science will prosper in the sunlight as the Information Age emerges from the selfish Dark Ages of exclusivity, excess, and concentration of power in the hands of vulcanized institutionalism. Doomed? Only if we persist in our comfortable delusions. But sustainability still needs definition. The term has suffered a similar fate that ecology has--captured by spinmeisters and twisted into all sorts of buzz-phrases that make all sorts of unsustainable practices salable by Mad Av and its ilk. For starters, Ecolog subscribers could do this right here--define sustainability with clarity. Please proceed. (Can 14,000+ ecologists be wrong?) WT - Original Message - From: johoma joh...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, June 25, 2012 2:15 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues An excerpt from the PLoS Biology editor-in-chief's overview: One of the reasons we publish more accessible magazine-like articles in the front section of *PLoS Biology* http://www.plosbiology.org/home.action is to raise awareness about issues that are important both to practicing scientists and to the wider public. As an open access journal, we can reach communities and organisations that don’t have access to the pay-walled literature, and they in turn can redistribute and reuse these articles without permission from us or the authors. The articles we published yesterday in our front section provide a case in point. In Rio de Janeiro last week, world leaders met for the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development http://www.uncsd2012.org/ to ”shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection”. We’re featuring three articles and an accompanying podcasthttp://blogs.plos.org/plospodcasts/from leading ecologists and conservation scientists that raise absolutely fundamental concerns about the physical limits on resource use that should be considered at the conference—but almost certainly won’t be, because sustainability has focused primarily on the social and economic sciences and developed largely independently of the key ecological principles that govern life. Burger et al argue that resources on earth are finite and ultimately we are constrained by the same hard biophyisical laws that regulate every other species and population on the planet. Famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon at a distance of about 29,000 kilometers. (Photo: NASA) The inspiration for this article collection came from Georgina Macehttp://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/g.mace, one of our Editorial Board membershttp://www.plosbiology.org/static/edboard.actionand Professor of Conservation Science and Director of the NERC Centre for Population Biology http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/cpb. It started with an essay http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001345submitted by Robbie Burger https://sites.google.com/site/josephrobertburger/, Jim Brown, http://biology.unm.edu/jhbrown/index.shtmlCraig Allenhttp://www.fort.usgs.gov/staff/staffprofile.asp?StaffID=109and others from Jim Brown’s lab http://biology.unm.edu/jhbrown/labmembers.shtml, in which they argue that the field of sustainability science does not sufficiently take account of human ecology and in particular the larger view offered by human macroecology, which aims to understand what governs and limits human
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues
Hello sustainable eco-loggers, This is my first eco-log post! I just graduated from University of Maryland with a minor in Sustainability Studies. We were taught the Brundtland Commission definition of Sustainability, which I believe is clear and concise. Sustainability is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Michael Riedman On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 6:05 AM, Neil Paul Cummins neilpaulcumm...@gmail.com wrote: I'll start off: Sustainability = the biosphere of the Earth continuing to exist in a state which can sustain complex life-forms This is how I define sustainability in my book: What Does it Mean to be ‘Green’? : *Sustainability, Respect Spirituality* ** *http://www.amazon.com/dp/1907962131/ref=nosim?tag=cranmorpublic-20* Dr Neil Paul Cummins http://neilpaulcummins.blogspot.co.uk/ On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 3:58 AM, Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net wrote: Ecolog: johoma, thanks for this summary. PLos Biology is leading the way, and someday Opens Source journals will be more common, edging out the ripoff journals and truly advancing science and education for all. There is more work to be done, but PLos Biology is helping to put steam behind the trend toward adaptative progress rather than competitive concentration of power that has stultified true progress in the past. Science will prosper in the sunlight as the Information Age emerges from the selfish Dark Ages of exclusivity, excess, and concentration of power in the hands of vulcanized institutionalism. Doomed? Only if we persist in our comfortable delusions. But sustainability still needs definition. The term has suffered a similar fate that ecology has--captured by spinmeisters and twisted into all sorts of buzz-phrases that make all sorts of unsustainable practices salable by Mad Av and its ilk. For starters, Ecolog subscribers could do this right here--define sustainability with clarity. Please proceed. (Can 14,000+ ecologists be wrong?) WT - Original Message - From: johoma joh...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, June 25, 2012 2:15 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues An excerpt from the PLoS Biology editor-in-chief's overview: One of the reasons we publish more accessible magazine-like articles in the front section of *PLoS Biology* http://www.plosbiology.org/home.action is to raise awareness about issues that are important both to practicing scientists and to the wider public. As an open access journal, we can reach communities and organisations that don’t have access to the pay-walled literature, and they in turn can redistribute and reuse these articles without permission from us or the authors. The articles we published yesterday in our front section provide a case in point. In Rio de Janeiro last week, world leaders met for the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development http://www.uncsd2012.org/ to ”shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection”. We’re featuring three articles and an accompanying podcasthttp://blogs.plos.org/plospodcasts/from leading ecologists and conservation scientists that raise absolutely fundamental concerns about the physical limits on resource use that should be considered at the conference—but almost certainly won’t be, because sustainability has focused primarily on the social and economic sciences and developed largely independently of the key ecological principles that govern life. Burger et al argue that resources on earth are finite and ultimately we are constrained by the same hard biophyisical laws that regulate every other species and population on the planet. Famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon at a distance of about 29,000 kilometers. (Photo: NASA) The inspiration for this article collection came from Georgina Macehttp://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/g.mace, one of our Editorial Board membershttp://www.plosbiology.org/static/edboard.actionand Professor of Conservation Science and Director of the NERC Centre for Population Biology http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/cpb. It started with an essay http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001345 submitted by Robbie Burger https://sites.google.com/site/josephrobertburger/, Jim Brown, http://biology.unm.edu/jhbrown/index.shtmlCraig Allenhttp://www.fort.usgs.gov/staff/staffprofile.asp?StaffID=109and others from Jim Brown’s lab http://biology.unm.edu/jhbrown/labmembers.shtml, in which they argue that the field of sustainability science does not sufficiently take account of human ecology and in particular the larger view offered
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues
Ha, a contentious subject! I'll take a shot at is as well: Sustainability - A practice of resource use that does not exceed the carrying capacity of the environment for such uses and is modeled upon ecological principles and systems thinking. Neahga Leonard On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 9:31 AM, Michael Riedman mried...@terpmail.umd.eduwrote: Hello sustainable eco-loggers, This is my first eco-log post! I just graduated from University of Maryland with a minor in Sustainability Studies. We were taught the Brundtland Commission definition of Sustainability, which I believe is clear and concise. Sustainability is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Michael Riedman On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 6:05 AM, Neil Paul Cummins neilpaulcumm...@gmail.com wrote: I'll start off: Sustainability = the biosphere of the Earth continuing to exist in a state which can sustain complex life-forms This is how I define sustainability in my book: What Does it Mean to be ‘Green’? : *Sustainability, Respect Spirituality* ** *http://www.amazon.com/dp/1907962131/ref=nosim?tag=cranmorpublic-20* Dr Neil Paul Cummins http://neilpaulcummins.blogspot.co.uk/ On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 3:58 AM, Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net wrote: Ecolog: johoma, thanks for this summary. PLos Biology is leading the way, and someday Opens Source journals will be more common, edging out the ripoff journals and truly advancing science and education for all. There is more work to be done, but PLos Biology is helping to put steam behind the trend toward adaptative progress rather than competitive concentration of power that has stultified true progress in the past. Science will prosper in the sunlight as the Information Age emerges from the selfish Dark Ages of exclusivity, excess, and concentration of power in the hands of vulcanized institutionalism. Doomed? Only if we persist in our comfortable delusions. But sustainability still needs definition. The term has suffered a similar fate that ecology has--captured by spinmeisters and twisted into all sorts of buzz-phrases that make all sorts of unsustainable practices salable by Mad Av and its ilk. For starters, Ecolog subscribers could do this right here--define sustainability with clarity. Please proceed. (Can 14,000+ ecologists be wrong?) WT - Original Message - From: johoma joh...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, June 25, 2012 2:15 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues An excerpt from the PLoS Biology editor-in-chief's overview: One of the reasons we publish more accessible magazine-like articles in the front section of *PLoS Biology* http://www.plosbiology.org/home.action is to raise awareness about issues that are important both to practicing scientists and to the wider public. As an open access journal, we can reach communities and organisations that don’t have access to the pay-walled literature, and they in turn can redistribute and reuse these articles without permission from us or the authors. The articles we published yesterday in our front section provide a case in point. In Rio de Janeiro last week, world leaders met for the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development http://www.uncsd2012.org/ to ”shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection”. We’re featuring three articles and an accompanying podcasthttp://blogs.plos.org/plospodcasts/from leading ecologists and conservation scientists that raise absolutely fundamental concerns about the physical limits on resource use that should be considered at the conference—but almost certainly won’t be, because sustainability has focused primarily on the social and economic sciences and developed largely independently of the key ecological principles that govern life. Burger et al argue that resources on earth are finite and ultimately we are constrained by the same hard biophyisical laws that regulate every other species and population on the planet. Famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon at a distance of about 29,000 kilometers. (Photo: NASA) The inspiration for this article collection came from Georgina Macehttp://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/g.mace, one of our Editorial Board membershttp://www.plosbiology.org/static/edboard.actionand Professor of Conservation Science and Director of the NERC Centre for Population Biology http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/cpb. It started with an essay
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues
Michael Riedman mried...@terpmail.umd.edu wrote: Hello sustainable eco-loggers, This is my first eco-log post! I just graduated from University of Maryland with a minor in Sustainability Studies. We were taught the Brundtland Commission definition of Sustainability, which I believe is clear and concise. Sustainability is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Michael Riedman It works for an anthropocentric perspective (I am assuming that needs and generations refer to people). With that caveat, I believe it is very close to the definition I provided. On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 6:05 AM, Neil Paul Cummins neilpaulcumm...@gmail.com wrote: I'll start off: Sustainability = the biosphere of the Earth continuing to exist in a state which can sustain complex life-forms This is how I define sustainability in my book: What Does it Mean to be ‘Green’? : *Sustainability, Respect Spirituality* ** *http://www.amazon.com/dp/1907962131/ref=nosim?tag=cranmorpublic-20* Dr Neil Paul Cummins http://neilpaulcummins.blogspot.co.uk/ On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 3:58 AM, Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net wrote: Ecolog: johoma, thanks for this summary. PLos Biology is leading the way, and someday Opens Source journals will be more common, edging out the ripoff journals and truly advancing science and education for all. There is more work to be done, but PLos Biology is helping to put steam behind the trend toward adaptative progress rather than competitive concentration of power that has stultified true progress in the past. Science will prosper in the sunlight as the Information Age emerges from the selfish Dark Ages of exclusivity, excess, and concentration of power in the hands of vulcanized institutionalism. Doomed? Only if we persist in our comfortable delusions. But sustainability still needs definition. The term has suffered a similar fate that ecology has--captured by spinmeisters and twisted into all sorts of buzz-phrases that make all sorts of unsustainable practices salable by Mad Av and its ilk. For starters, Ecolog subscribers could do this right here--define sustainability with clarity. Please proceed. (Can 14,000+ ecologists be wrong?) WT - Original Message - From: johoma joh...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, June 25, 2012 2:15 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues An excerpt from the PLoS Biology editor-in-chief's overview: One of the reasons we publish more accessible magazine-like articles in the front section of *PLoS Biology* http://www.plosbiology.org/home.action is to raise awareness about issues that are important both to practicing scientists and to the wider public. As an open access journal, we can reach communities and organisations that don’t have access to the pay-walled literature, and they in turn can redistribute and reuse these articles without permission from us or the authors. The articles we published yesterday in our front section provide a case in point. In Rio de Janeiro last week, world leaders met for the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development http://www.uncsd2012.org/ to ”shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection”. We’re featuring three articles and an accompanying podcasthttp://blogs.plos.org/plospodcasts/from leading ecologists and conservation scientists that raise absolutely fundamental concerns about the physical limits on resource use that should be considered at the conference—but almost certainly won’t be, because sustainability has focused primarily on the social and economic sciences and developed largely independently of the key ecological principles that govern life. Burger et al argue that resources on earth are finite and ultimately we are constrained by the same hard biophyisical laws that regulate every other species and population on the planet. Famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon at a distance of about 29,000 kilometers. (Photo: NASA) The inspiration for this article collection came from Georgina Macehttp://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/g.mace, one of our Editorial Board membershttp://www.plosbiology.org/static/edboard.actionand Professor of Conservation Science and Director of the NERC Centre for Population Biology http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/cpb. It started with an essay http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001345 submitted by Robbie Burger https://sites.google.com/site/josephrobertburger/, Jim
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues
I define a sustainable process as one that does not degrade the conditions or processes that it depends upon. But, we don't know the effects of our actions well enough to confidently classify current actions vis-a-vis sustainability (except in obviously non-sustainable cases). If that is so, then sustainability can only really be judged in retrospect and an alternative term, such as apparent sustainability, should be used for assessments of current processes that look ok but have not stood the test of time. I think I first heard this point made by Robert Costanza. Apologies to him if I have botched or muddled it. The usual applications of sustainable strike me as practically meaningless and little more than greener than some other conventional alternative. I once heard an architect claim that a brick is sustainable. She apparently hadn't read typical accounts of what happened to the forests around the Indus Valley thousands of years ago. Pete Peter C. Schulze, Ph.D. Professor of Biology Environmental Science Director, Center for Environmental Studies Austin College 900 North Grand Avenue, Suite 61588 | Sherman, TX 75090 USA Phone 903.813.2284 austincollege.edu On 7/17/12 10:36 AM, David L. McNeely mcnee...@cox.net wrote: Michael Riedman mried...@terpmail.umd.edu wrote: Hello sustainable eco-loggers, This is my first eco-log post! I just graduated from University of Maryland with a minor in Sustainability Studies. We were taught the Brundtland Commission definition of Sustainability, which I believe is clear and concise. Sustainability is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Michael Riedman It works for an anthropocentric perspective (I am assuming that needs and generations refer to people). With that caveat, I believe it is very close to the definition I provided. On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 6:05 AM, Neil Paul Cummins neilpaulcumm...@gmail.com wrote: I'll start off: Sustainability = the biosphere of the Earth continuing to exist in a state which can sustain complex life-forms This is how I define sustainability in my book: What Does it Mean to be ŒGreen¹? : *Sustainability, Respect Spirituality* ** *http://www.amazon.com/dp/1907962131/ref=nosim?tag=cranmorpublic-20* Dr Neil Paul Cummins http://neilpaulcummins.blogspot.co.uk/ On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 3:58 AM, Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net wrote: Ecolog: johoma, thanks for this summary. PLos Biology is leading the way, and someday Opens Source journals will be more common, edging out the ripoff journals and truly advancing science and education for all. There is more work to be done, but PLos Biology is helping to put steam behind the trend toward adaptative progress rather than competitive concentration of power that has stultified true progress in the past. Science will prosper in the sunlight as the Information Age emerges from the selfish Dark Ages of exclusivity, excess, and concentration of power in the hands of vulcanized institutionalism. Doomed? Only if we persist in our comfortable delusions. But sustainability still needs definition. The term has suffered a similar fate that ecology has--captured by spinmeisters and twisted into all sorts of buzz-phrases that make all sorts of unsustainable practices salable by Mad Av and its ilk. For starters, Ecolog subscribers could do this right here--define sustainability with clarity. Please proceed. (Can 14,000+ ecologists be wrong?) WT - Original Message - From: johoma joh...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, June 25, 2012 2:15 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues An excerpt from the PLoS Biology editor-in-chief's overview: One of the reasons we publish more accessible magazine-like articles in the front section of *PLoS Biology* http://www.plosbiology.org/home.action is to raise awareness about issues that are important both to practicing scientists and to the wider public. As an open access journal, we can reach communities and organisations that don¹t have access to the pay-walled literature, and they in turn can redistribute and reuse these articles without permission from us or the authors. The articles we published yesterday in our front section provide a case in point. In Rio de Janeiro last week, world leaders met for the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development http://www.uncsd2012.org/ to ²shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection². We¹re featuring three articles and an accompanying podcasthttp://blogs.plos.org/plospodcasts/from leading ecologists and conservation scientists that raise
Re: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues
Ecolog: johoma, thanks for this summary. PLos Biology is leading the way, and someday Opens Source journals will be more common, edging out the ripoff journals and truly advancing science and education for all. There is more work to be done, but PLos Biology is helping to put steam behind the trend toward adaptative progress rather than competitive concentration of power that has stultified true progress in the past. Science will prosper in the sunlight as the Information Age emerges from the selfish Dark Ages of exclusivity, excess, and concentration of power in the hands of vulcanized institutionalism. Doomed? Only if we persist in our comfortable delusions. But sustainability still needs definition. The term has suffered a similar fate that ecology has--captured by spinmeisters and twisted into all sorts of buzz-phrases that make all sorts of unsustainable practices salable by Mad Av and its ilk. For starters, Ecolog subscribers could do this right here--define sustainability with clarity. Please proceed. (Can 14,000+ ecologists be wrong?) WT - Original Message - From: johoma joh...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Monday, June 25, 2012 2:15 PM Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues An excerpt from the PLoS Biology editor-in-chief's overview: One of the reasons we publish more accessible magazine-like articles in the front section of *PLoS Biology* http://www.plosbiology.org/home.action is to raise awareness about issues that are important both to practicing scientists and to the wider public. As an open access journal, we can reach communities and organisations that don’t have access to the pay-walled literature, and they in turn can redistribute and reuse these articles without permission from us or the authors. The articles we published yesterday in our front section provide a case in point. In Rio de Janeiro last week, world leaders met for the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development http://www.uncsd2012.org/ to ”shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection”. We’re featuring three articles and an accompanying podcasthttp://blogs.plos.org/plospodcasts/from leading ecologists and conservation scientists that raise absolutely fundamental concerns about the physical limits on resource use that should be considered at the conference—but almost certainly won’t be, because sustainability has focused primarily on the social and economic sciences and developed largely independently of the key ecological principles that govern life. Burger et al argue that resources on earth are finite and ultimately we are constrained by the same hard biophyisical laws that regulate every other species and population on the planet. Famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon at a distance of about 29,000 kilometers. (Photo: NASA) The inspiration for this article collection came from Georgina Macehttp://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/g.mace, one of our Editorial Board membershttp://www.plosbiology.org/static/edboard.actionand Professor of Conservation Science and Director of the NERC Centre for Population Biology http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/cpb. It started with an essay http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001345submitted by Robbie Burger https://sites.google.com/site/josephrobertburger/, Jim Brown, http://biology.unm.edu/jhbrown/index.shtmlCraig Allenhttp://www.fort.usgs.gov/staff/staffprofile.asp?StaffID=109and others from Jim Brown’s lab http://biology.unm.edu/jhbrown/labmembers.shtml, in which they argue that the field of sustainability science does not sufficiently take account of human ecology and in particular the larger view offered by human macroecology, which aims to understand what governs and limits human distribution. The very strong – and seemingly obvious – point they make is that ultimately we are constrained by the same hard biophyisical laws that regulate every other species and population on the planet — and we have already surpassed the Earth’s capacity to sustain even current levels of human population and socioeconomic activity, let alone future trajectories of growth. And while we often applaud ourselves for doing something apparently sustainable at a local level, we ignore the fact that we displace the consequences of using up resources either temporally or spatially at larger regional or global scales. These authors provide a powerful set of examples that show the wider detrimental impacts of locally ‘sustainable’ systems, including that of Portland, Oregon – which ‘is hailed by the media as “the most sustainable city in America”’, and the Bristol Bay Salmon Fishery, also cited as a success story. (Burger et al’s point here echoes a call for more ecosystem-based management of fisheries made recently in another
[ECOLOG-L] Are we doomed yet: A journal debate about science, the practice of sustainability, and communicating issues
An excerpt from the PLoS Biology editor-in-chief's overview: One of the reasons we publish more accessible magazine-like articles in the front section of *PLoS Biology* http://www.plosbiology.org/home.action is to raise awareness about issues that are important both to practicing scientists and to the wider public. As an open access journal, we can reach communities and organisations that don’t have access to the pay-walled literature, and they in turn can redistribute and reuse these articles without permission from us or the authors. The articles we published yesterday in our front section provide a case in point. In Rio de Janeiro last week, world leaders met for the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development http://www.uncsd2012.org/ to ”shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection”. We’re featuring three articles and an accompanying podcasthttp://blogs.plos.org/plospodcasts/from leading ecologists and conservation scientists that raise absolutely fundamental concerns about the physical limits on resource use that should be considered at the conference—but almost certainly won’t be, because sustainability has focused primarily on the social and economic sciences and developed largely independently of the key ecological principles that govern life. Burger et al argue that resources on earth are finite and ultimately we are constrained by the same hard biophyisical laws that regulate every other species and population on the planet. Famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon at a distance of about 29,000 kilometers. (Photo: NASA) The inspiration for this article collection came from Georgina Macehttp://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/g.mace, one of our Editorial Board membershttp://www.plosbiology.org/static/edboard.actionand Professor of Conservation Science and Director of the NERC Centre for Population Biology http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/cpb. It started with an essay http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001345submitted by Robbie Burger https://sites.google.com/site/josephrobertburger/, Jim Brown, http://biology.unm.edu/jhbrown/index.shtmlCraig Allenhttp://www.fort.usgs.gov/staff/staffprofile.asp?StaffID=109and others from Jim Brown’s lab http://biology.unm.edu/jhbrown/labmembers.shtml, in which they argue that the field of sustainability science does not sufficiently take account of human ecology and in particular the larger view offered by human macroecology, which aims to understand what governs and limits human distribution. The very strong – and seemingly obvious – point they make is that ultimately we are constrained by the same hard biophyisical laws that regulate every other species and population on the planet — and we have already surpassed the Earth’s capacity to sustain even current levels of human population and socioeconomic activity, let alone future trajectories of growth. And while we often applaud ourselves for doing something apparently sustainable at a local level, we ignore the fact that we displace the consequences of using up resources either temporally or spatially at larger regional or global scales. These authors provide a powerful set of examples that show the wider detrimental impacts of locally ‘sustainable’ systems, including that of Portland, Oregon – which ‘is hailed by the media as “the most sustainable city in America”’, and the Bristol Bay Salmon Fishery, also cited as a success story. (Burger et al’s point here echoes a call for more ecosystem-based management of fisheries made recently in another recent *PLoS Biology* article by Levi et alhttp://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001303 ). During the editorial process, it became clear that while there was agreement that human ecology is a key factor for understanding sustainable resource use , not everyone agreed with the pessimistic and seemingly static outlook presented by Burger et al. We therefore commissioned John Matthews http://climatechangewater.org/page2/page2.html and Fred Boltzhttp://www.conservation.org/FMG/Articles/Pages/conservation_in_action_fred_boltz.aspxfrom Conservation International http://www.conservation.org/Pages/default.aspx to provide their more optimistic perspectivehttp://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001344. They argue that the world is a much more dynamic place than that set out by Burger et al and that human ingenuity and adaptability (both human and planetary) may provide creative solutions that will allow human societies to overcome resource limitation and continue to grow. *rest of the story here: ** http://blogs.plos.org/biologue/2012/06/20/rio20-why-sustainability-must-include-ecology/ * * * * * * * *Direct links *Georgina Mace’s overview: *The Limits to Sustainability Science: Ecological Constraints or Endless Innovation? **
